Read A Philosophy of Walking Online
Authors: Frederic Gros
A Philosophy of Walking (12 page)
It is said that at the end of Thoreau's life, a priest visited his deathbed to bring him the solace of religion by evoking the other world, the beyond. Thoreau, summoning a weak smile, is said to have replied: âMy friend, one world at a time.'
*
The French word
témoin
, meaning witness, has the subsidiary meaning of baton passed between runners in a relay race [translator's note].
Energy
Â
I
n his essay
A Winter Walk
, Thoreau depicted the cold-weather walker. When you go out, he wrote, on a freezing morning â snow-covered paths and roads, trees on all sides extending bare snow-outlined branches â moving through that immense muffled frozen landscape, then you walk quickly and well, to keep warm by feeling the heat of your own body. The well-being in walking in the cold is partly from that feeling of a small stove burning in your vitals.
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill â¦Â This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within
the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart. There is the south.
The first energy you feel when walking is your own, that of your body in motion. It isn't an explosion of strength, but more a continuous and palpable radiance.
The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth:
The Lakota was a true Naturist â a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping
himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
Walking, by virtue of having the earth's support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth's force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth's rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other.
A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and
make him at home
: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers â¦Â all these things support, transport and nourish us.
Pilgrimage
Â
W
alking isn't always an aimless stroll, a solitary wander. Historically it has sometimes taken codified forms which governed its conduct, termination and purpose. Pilgrimage is one of these major cultural forms.
The primary meaning of
peregrinus
is foreigner or exile. The pilgrim, originally, is not one who is heading somewhere (Rome, Jerusalem, etc.), but essentially one who
is not at home where he is walking
. In other words, not a stroller taking a few turns around the neighbourhood after dinner, or a landowner making a Sunday round of his plantations. For the pilgrim is never at home where he walks: he's a stranger, a foreigner. We are all, say the Church Fathers, fleetingly
on this earth, passing through, and so we ought always to provide a night's shelter in our dwellings, to see our possessions as a disposable burden, and our friends as people met by the wayside.
A brief cascade of words, some remarks on the weather, a couple of handshakes, then goodbye: âFare well.' Every man is a pilgrim in this vale of tears, the Fathers say: his whole life is an exile, for his true dwelling-place can never be reached here below. And the whole Earth is a makeshift shelter. The Christian passes through this life like a walker in any country: without stopping. These lines, for example, are found in the chant of the Compostela pilgrim: âCompanion, we must make our way / Without lingering.'
Perhaps the itinerant monks called âGyrovagues' were especially responsible for promoting this view of our condition as eternal strangers. They journeyed ceaselessly from monastery to monastery, without fixed abode, and they haven't quite disappeared, even today: it seems there are still a handful tramping Mount Athos. They walk for their entire lives on narrow mountain paths, back and forth on a long repeated round, sleeping at nightfall wherever their feet have taken them; they spend their lives murmuring prayers on foot, walk all day without destination or goal, this way or that, taking branching paths at random, turning, returning, without going anywhere, illustrating through endless wandering their condition as permanent strangers in this profane world.
But the Gyrovagues were not much appreciated. These perpetual nomads were denigrated as profiteers and
vagabonds, and the established Church condemned the itinerant mode of life. St Benedict in particular imposed âmonastic stability', asserting that the believer's condition of eternal pilgrimage (
peregrinatio perpetua
) was merely a metaphor, a metaphor that ought not to be squandered on the road, so much as deepened through the detachment of monastic prayer and contemplation. Several centuries earlier the Church Fathers, notably in Egypt, had already drawn a careful distinction between the pilgrim and the hermit. Of course
xenateia
(the condition of foreignness to the world) was to be exalted, but not manifested in suspect vagabondage; simple contemplative retreat would suffice.
Peregrinatio perpetua
emphasizes the wish to leave, tear oneself away, renounce. Christ invited his disciples to take to the road: to leave their wives and children, their lands, their businesses and status, to go forth to spread the Word (âSell all that you own, give it to the poor and follow me'). And much earlier still, the act of Abraham: leave everything (âGo into a place that I will show you â¦'). You walk to have done with it all and purge yourself: to have done with the world's clamour, the accumulation of tasks, the wear and tear. And there's nothing better for forgetting, for not being
here
anymore, than the great boredom of the roads, the limitless monotony of forest paths. Walk, cut yourself off, depart, leave.
When you really walk, farewell follows farewell all day long. You can never be quite sure of ever setting foot in a place again. This condition of departure adds intensity to the gaze. That backward look when you cross a ridge, just
before the landscape tilts. Or the final glance at last night's lodging as you leave in the morning (its grey mass, the trees behind). You turn round again, one more time â¦Â but that restless gaze doesn't aim to grasp, possess or keep: rather it aims to give, to leave a little of its light in the stubborn presence of the rocks and flowers. The walker on nameless glaciers, under futureless skies, across plains devoid of history, scatters the flashes of his gaze into the very substance of things. When he walks, it is to cut through the world's opacity.
The pilgrim is not only a metaphor for the human condition. He also has a concrete, historical existence. Throughout the Middle Ages he was, we know, a distinct, differentiated character. A pilgrim had a specific juridical status. People adopted the condition of pilgrim officially, ritually, in public, with a solemn High Mass, after which the bishop blessed the walker's traditional kit: the staff (a long stick with a metal ferrule to help him walk, and fight off dogs or wild animals), a mendicant's pouch to hold the day's bread and essential documents. This bag had to be small (for survival was essentially ensured by faith in God), made of animal skin (a reminder of mortality), and always open, because a pilgrim is disposed to give, share, exchange. The pilgrim was also identified by his broad-brimmed hat (turned up at the front to display a scallop shell if he had been to Santiago de Compostela), short tunic and voluminous cloak.
On the occasion of his induction Mass, the bishop or parish priest would issue the pilgrim with a covering letter
to serve as a safe-conduct during the journey, giving entry to monasteries and hospices that he would pass en route, and also (it was hoped) protecting him from highway robbers who might leave a consecrated walker alone for fear of punishment from on high. The ceremony was very solemn and grave, because this departure was like a small death. To reach Rome or Santiago, not to mention Jerusalem, would take months, with no guarantee of returning. You could die of exhaustion, be murdered by robbers, drown in a shipwreck or fall over a cliff. Hence the pilgrim, before leaving, had to make peace with his enemies, settle his outstanding disputes, and even make a will.
So why go at all, if the conditions were so difficult? The motives were numerous. In the first place, to augment devotion, to bear witness to one's faith.
Devotionis causa
. Because above and beyond the primary
peregrinatio
(the human condition of wandering through this vale of tears), each pilgrimage was assigned a specific goal, a final, radiant destination: visiting a sanctuary. Obviously the main sites of pilgrimage were the tombs of apostles or saints: St James in Compostela, St Paul and St Peter in Rome, Christ's empty sepulchre in Jerusalem; more modestly, St Martin's tomb at Tours, or the archangel Michael's relics at Mont-Saint-Michel. Pilgrimage testified to faith. It involved continuous asceticism in the humility of walking, accompanied by frequent fasts and constant prayer.
But a pilgrimage could also be undertaken as a penance for very serious faults. If a pious individual or a cleric confessed to a terrible sin weighing on his conscience â a huge
blasphemy, or even a homicide that had escaped human justice â the penance could consist of a pilgrimage, its distance corresponding to the gravity of the offence. Some civil jurisdictions in the Middle Ages could impose a long pilgrimage for heavy crimes (such as parricide or rape), with the added advantage that it removed the offender. And in their time, the courts of the Inquisition sometimes imposed this temporary exile on heretics.
While the strain and suffering inherent to travel at that time made pilgrimage suitable as a mild punishment, it could be made less mild by specific conditions: walking barefoot, or hampered by being made to wear shackles on one's arms, legs or neck. The iron or steel bands â sometimes forged out of the weapon used to commit the crime â were apt to rust and break apart after months of fatigue and sweat.
Even without these terrible conditions, enduring long months of rain, cold and sunburn (for the pilgrim was totally
exposed
) could be a very gruelling experience. Then as now, the feet ended by becoming a constant fount of suffering: suppurating sores, painful gashes â¦Â The ritual washing of a pilgrim's feet when he arrived at a monastery, apart from demonstrating the monks' Christ-like humility, reminds us that the pilgrim was a figure entitled to special consideration.